On Air: The Third Sex

India’s first transgender newsreader on emerging from the shadows.

WrittenBy:Manisha Pande
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Padmini Prakash didn’t know she was about to make history when she read out the 7 pm news bulletin for the first time for Coimbatore-based news channel, Lotus News. “I was nervous and my palms were sweating. I could feel my feet tremble, even as I read the news out in a calm and clear tone. I made no mistakes though,” she says. The day was August 15, Independence Day, and India had just got its first transgender newsreader.

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“I didn’t realise I was the first transgender to be a newsreader, neither was I out to prove a point. For me it was just a job that I took up. But it feels great now when people appreciate and congratulate me,” she says. Recently, a policeman in her city recognised her and stopped her for an autograph.

It’s been almost a month since Padmini has been delivering the evening bulletin (7:00-7:30) for the Tamil news channel, and last week she caught the attention of Indian and international media as India’s first transgender newsreader when several newspapers reported it. Padmini says she’s just begun to enjoy the limelight.

She was 15 when her parents abandoned her and left her to fend for herself. Padmini recalls being discriminated against at home vis-à-vis her younger brother and sister. “If there was a wedding or a family function, my parents would leave me at home and not take me out with them. They were ashamed of me and beat me up,” she says. “They realised from my mannerisms and behaviour that I was different, and started hating me,” she adds.

Given the tendency to club all trans people as hijras or eunuchs, it’s important to note here that Padmini is a transgender (female) or a trans woman – which implies she was born male but has a female gender identity. She truly came to terms with her identity when she started getting attracted to the same sex and wanted to dress differently: not as a boy but as a girl. She underwent a sex-change operation (male to female) about 10 years ago.

After being deserted by her family in her teens, Padmini had started teaching Bharatanatyam to sustain herself – she had been learning the dance form since the age of six. She then came in contact with the Tamil Nadu Aids Initiative and took to activism. “I gained confidence once I started working with the Aids Initiative project and realised there were other people like me.”

During the years spent engaged in activism, she participated in various daily shows for Jaya TV and even did a TV serial. She got familiar with the camera and became a somewhat known face on local TV channels. She had also won the Miss Transgender India title in 2009. So, it wasn’t a tough decision for her when Lotus TV approached her to read the evening news. Lotus TV Chairman GKS Selvakumar says the channel had noticed her as a prominent transgender activist and signed her up for a three-month anchor training course. “She was very good and we put her on air within a month. Her Tamil diction is very good and she looks good on screen,” he says, adding that the channel would like to hire more transgender people and help them emerge from the shadow of the stigma to which they are subjected.

Padmini strongly advocates mainstream occupations for people from the transgender community. She believes the community should no longer remain on the fringes and nurture whatever talent they have. “For that though, parents also have to start accepting transgender children,” she says.

Padmini is married to her long-time partner Prakash and recently adopted a child with him. He remains her biggest source of strength and motivation. At the age of 31, she has found her calling in anchoring and wants to better her craft. Her favourite newsreaders include Shobana Ravi, one of the longest-serving and most popular Tamil news anchors, first Tamil newsreader at All India Radio, and newsreaders Saroj Narayana Swamy and Sujatha Babu. Apart from Lotus TV, she likes Sun TV. She feels the most important thing a newsreader has to keep in mind is to deliver news in as clear a way as possible and be understood by all kinds of people.

In an industry that has rather set standards of beauty, with perfectly-presented news anchors looking like clones of one another, Padmini is aware and happy about the fact that she is breaking stereotypes. Transgender activist and director of Delhi-based Mitr Trust, Rudrani Chettri says: “For most people transgenders aren’t even a reality. In that context, Padmini’s achievement is great and will help create space for transgender people in public consciousness.”

The Supreme Court recognised transgenders as the third sex in April 2014, but given the long and sustained discrimination the community has faced, it will be sometime before transgenders move away from the margins to the mainstream. Meanwhile, feats like that of Padmini’s continue to give hope to the community.

Watch Padmini’s first clip from the first segment on Lotus TV.

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